Sometimes 'better' is all there is
by ShadowSpires
Summary: Kix hears a voice outside. It cuts straight through duty, and the grief that weighs on him every day, and slices straight into his soul. A brother's voice. (Set after TFA)


Kix was just finishing bullying the medics into acquiescing to his treatment plan for the young not-a-shiny that had been rushed into medical with massive lightsaber burns to his back. The stormtrooper deserter was not a vod, but he had been raised in the bowels of the empire Kix and his vode had been unwittingly instrumental in helping to found.

More importantly, he had _broken free of it_ the way they never could once those kriffing chips activated ( _and fuck Fives and Tup had been right and then they were dead and why had Kix never noticed, he was a fucking medic, he should have noticed something like that_ _why hadn't he_ _ **noticed**_ ) but in a way that would have made them proud, helping to fight off a Sith and win a major battle. And while that didn't automatically make him a vod himself, it did make Kix feel possessive. Protective.

So when the Rebellion medics – _who have never treated a lightsaber burn in their lives_ – thought they knew better then him – _who fought against Sith before most of these beings were born and saw more lightsaber wounds than he cared to remember_ – he has no choice but to set them straight and try to give the little not-a-vod the best chance he can. Dr. Kinsie had finally thrown her hands up in half-amused resignation to Kix's expertise and outlined plan when he heard a voice outside.

It cuts across the babble of the med-tent, roused to a fury in the aftermath of battle but dying down now as patients are assessed and the flow of injured reduces to a trickle.

It cuts straight through duty, and the grief that weighs on him every day, and slices straight into his soul.

A brother's voice.

He bolts.

He doesn't even hesitate. He drops the medical chart he's holding, ignores the alarmed, questioning shouts that follow him. His patent is in good enough hands, and he can't care about anything else but finding the source of that voice, not when he thought he would never hear it again, formed from the same throat as his.

Familiar even beyond that, and he though he was the last, he thought he was _alone_ the way they were _never supposed to be._ He had spent his life surrounded by brothers and then woken in the future to find himself _alone._

Nearly a year later and it was still almost too much, every day, to exist without brothers around him.

He bursts out of the med-tent, eyes frantically scanning the crowd.

The voice comes again and Kix zeros in on it, angling his dead-run towards the small one-man craft landed far closer to the med-tent than anyone would have authorized, but still far enough that the small rational part of him can't believe he actually heard him.

It's not the _right_ voice, not the one he aches for every day, with a shadow of intonation enough to mark it distinct, unique, beloved.

Its not a bared skull with the republic cog worn proudly, and what Jesse would have thought of what the Republic had become Kix _will never know,_ but it is a familiar vod nonetheless, arguing with the angry looking rebel commander and his twitchy squad, a blue handprint high on the right side of his flight jacket almost unnecessary.

Kix ignores them, barreling past them with no care to the blasters they hold at the ready, the questions they are barking about how he found them and who he is, and how he landed.

He's already crying, vision blurred with tears when he impacts Echo. His vod'ika looks older, sporting a set of mechanicals that he doesn't bother to hide, and Kix barely notices, sending them both sprawling into the dirt.

He doesn't know how this is possible. He doesn't care. Echo isn't the vod Kix most wants to see again in the Galaxy, but then again, Kix knows he isn't the vod Echo would most like to see either.

Fives and Jesse are dead. And _nothing can make that okay._

It's not enough, not by half, but as he holds Echo tight and demands answers to questions he doesn't wait for the answers to, it's…better. Better, not to be alone in a galaxy that doesn't understand him.

Them.

Unbelievable to be a 'them' again.

Better, unbelievably better to have a brother at his side again.


End file.
